Ivy League Grad Ruins Irony by Actually Becoming a Whore

it's hip to be sharedRadar magazine delivers a shocking blow to elite education by including an Ivy Leaguer in gonzo-journo story "Inside the World of High-Class Hipster Hookers." Seriously, $40K-per-year education and Sally Straight-A grows up to be a hipster?

Just kidding! The shock is that she became a whore:

After graduating from an Ivy League college in 2006, Kelly says she was thinking about going to grad school to become an English professor. She's decided to put that aspiration on hold, though, while she rakes in the equivalent of an investment banker's salary selling sex.

I'd make a joke, but I used them all up on a nearly identical story last March.

As it turns out, finance is something of a sister industry to the whore-o-sphere. The three main characters get into the business of vag-selling at the behest of some "sleazy banker types" they meet at a bar. Whore #1 gets sleazy banker's business card, and before you know it she's making $3000 a thrust! The ladies frequent "douchebag spots in the Meatpacking District" and turn themselves into an unstoppable trio of whoredom. Each girl has a special personality niche, just like in Charlie's Angels:

These days Heather tends to book with more bankers and Wall Street types, Olivia with a lot of retired hipsters and club owners, and Kelly with men from the art world. During a typical week they each entertain at least three different clients—and sometimes as many as nine. "I don't mind sleeping with two guys in a night," Kelly says. "Just as long as the second client isn't rough with me."

Ivy League Angel has all the time management skills.

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Pompous Ivy League Lit Kids Ruin it for the Rest of Us

Have you ever wondered where all those self-styled intellectuals – pale faced, with their hair swept to the side – end up when they are cast out of their ivory towers? Some of them, undoubtedly the more masochistic ones, come crawling back as graduate students. And they are looked upon – often unfairly – by undergrads with a mix of fear and derision. The others, the meaner and richer ones, end up in New York, where they live off their trust funds and fancy themselves members of the literary aristocracy.

A few weeks ago the Daily Intelligencer picked up on a disenchanted blog post by Jessica Roy, an NYU student who had finally made her way into such circles one night only to find that it was populated by a cadre of pretentious and sycophantic Ivy Leaguers. The Daily Intel solicited a more thorough explanation from Roy:

A part of me longed to be absorbed into that elite circle of Ivy-educated literature nuts who have co-opted what it means to be a writer in New York. Because these days, if you’re not with them, you’re being mocked by them. I have thin skin, so I figured the former would be my best bet.

More unsettling dirt on your former classmates after the jump.
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Isn’t Harvard Just the Worst?

That certainly seems to be the opinion of a few journalists recently. Wait,  seems to be? With a headline like "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education," you just know the author is not too keen on the Crimson. The author is none other than our old friend Cockmaster D (William Deresiewicz for our forgetful readers). Goold ol' Cockmaster D recently discovered that he was too elitist to interact with a plumber, so obviously the rest of us are just as bad.

Because we're coddled with extensions on papers and rampant grade inflation, we grow up to be the worst people ever. Also, it's because we have gates:

The physical form of the university—its quads and residential colleges, with their Gothic stone façades and wrought-iron portals—is constituted by the locked gate set into the encircling wall. Everyone carries around an ID card that determines which gates they can enter. The gate, in other words, is a kind of governing metaphor—because the social form of the university, as is true of every elite school, is constituted the same way. Elite colleges are walled domains guarded by locked gates, with admission granted only to the elect.    

He's right. Gates might be cool when every other college does it, but how dare we use them to keep people out!

He also points out that George Bush went to Yale, so take that, Ivy League! Yeah that's right one of the dozens of presidents who went to elite universities isn't so awesome! Clearly we have no defense to these accusations, but are we really that bad?

No, we're worse! After the jump, Harvard is destroying the world (and bruising the butts of old ladies).

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Ivy Leaguers Big Fat Meanie-Poos, Says Princetonian/Yalie

Ivy Leaguers Big Fat Meanie-Poos, Says Princetonian/YalieSound the alarm! A break in the ranks! Princeton grad and Yale 1L Amelia Rawls defies the Ivy tribe this week in a column for the Washington Post, "Best and Brightest, but Not the Nicest," where she reveals the most closely guarded of our cabal's secrets: We are not bionic superheroes. We are not Mother Teresa. In fact, some of us aren't even nice.

I mean the kind of "nice" that involves showing compassion not merely because membership in community service groups demands it. The kind of "nice" that involves sharing notes with a student who is sick or lending a textbook to a friend who doesn't have one.

...these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to "do what is right."

What kind of horrible people was Amelia friends with in college, that she thinks thwarting sick people and teasing the homeless is normal among her peers? As for taking out the trash -- well, seriously, do you know any 18-year-olds who do that voluntarily?

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Yale To Poor People: Drop Dead…Literally

Yale To Poor People: Drop Dead...LiterallyXiaochen Su (Yale '10), following the lead of misanthropic YDN contributor Jun Teresa Ding, has written an op/ed so ill-conceived, insensitive, and fundamentally absurd that you have to wonder if we aren't being treated to some elaborate hoax. It reads like an SAT-II writing exercise, as taken by Thomas Malthus in a bad mood.

Su is alarmed by America's, "increase in population, due to the failure to control population growth in the past." Even worse, Su reports:

"Statistics show that majority of U.S. population growth comes from immigration and high birth rate among the minorities, while the native Caucasian population is stabilizing."

Then Su reminds us why we don't like minorities again:

Notwithstanding exceptions, larger numbers of minorities are ill-educated, have less desirable jobs, and thus are less capable to financially sustain their livelihoods.

In fact, many more minorities depend on government welfare and low-income assistance than whites. Over time, jobs that require less skill will continue to decrease, being outsourced to developing countries with lower labor costs, and the percentage of minorities in the U.S. population will increase, forcing the government to spend much more to evade riots by poor, hungry, unemployed minorities.

The minorities are coming! The minorities are coming! Not to worry, though, Su has a radical solution to thin out the teeming underclasses. It's reminiscent of Communist China, so you know it's good. He want to eliminate the child tax-credit and replace it with... a child tax.

And if this doesn't work, true-born philanthrophist Su thinks that, "welfare programs should be cut back and the cost of children's necessities, such as infants' formula and college education, should be raised in price." He writes of, "extracting taxes and fees from the lower class and poor immigrants." Spoken like a true German bureaucrat. Unsurprisingly, Su is also against immigration by poor people:

"With no understanding of the country's economic dynamics, the poor continue to reproduce and immigrate to lightheartedly siphon off the state's budget."

Those poors, so lighthearted, so numerous, if only they understood this country's economic dynamics like our Great Leader Xiaochen Su.

After the jump -- the article in full.

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New Jersey Legislature to Cottage Club: Drop Dead

Just a week ago, the New Jersey State Legislature - not exactly a body known for model governance or even un-corruptness in general - may have seen its finest hour. In an overwhelmingly bipartisan measure, the legislature passed a specially-designed law to force the University Cottage Club, one of Princeton's eating clubs, to pay its property taxes.

The Cottage Club, a beautiful, McKim, Mead, and White building constructed in 1906, is a member of the National Register of Historic Places. It is also home to football players, soccer players, southern belles, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

New Jersey Legislature to Cottage Club: Drop Dead

Cottage had been fighting for a non-profit tax exemption since 2003, insisting, we suppose, that the rampant undergraduate drinking going on inside was in some exceedingly tenuous way related to the public trust. The club had recently won a court case that forced Princeton Borough to refund it over $300,000, money that the club's graduate board apparently desperately needed. Princeton Borough was not exactly thrilled by the ruling: "The taxpayers are being forced to pay for a club they are not allowed to use,"declared Mayor Mildred Trotman.

And so the New Jersey State Legislature stepped in, justifiably preventing a bunch of Princetonians from being huge jerks. Not since 1991, when the Tiger Inn went all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court to avoid extending membership to women, has a Princeton eating club behaved so poorly in such a public light.

To think that the club pursued such intense legal channels - even though they knew an anti-Cottage bill was in the works- is a testament to the narrow-minded parsimony of rich white people. We hope the Borough spends the tax revenue on a brand-new police unit to bust underage drinking - at Cottage.

--JACOB SAVAGE

Yale Blogger Makes Sloppy-Drunk Kids at Toad’s Seem Decent

Yale Blogger Makes Sloppy-Drunk Kids at Toad's Seem DecentPerforming CPR on Pablog last week (his sinus rhythm is still flatlining; clap harder, damn you!) made us guiltily wonder who else was toiling away out there on the student blog-quad, under our radar. We do have a blogroll, way over on the right somewhere, but it was last updated around the time Lincoln was shot; and we do have our Blog Man on Campus critic, who chimes in every so often. But there's obviously a ton of sites we miss, and so, with open hearts and open minds, we set out looking for signs of life.

Blogs it took to piss us off: 1.

We want to like Yale blog 06520-2848, we really do. The site's name, for starters, we assume is a middle finger to the insufferable Harvard magazine 02138. And when we saw the April 6 entry, we got straight-up Christmas-morning-when-you're-seven giddy. You know Gawker's delightful Blue States Lose column? (For those who don't: a caustic -- even for Gawker -- observer rips on the 10 most obnoxious hipster pics from photo sites like Misshapes, Last Night's Party and the Cobrasnake.) Well, 06520 has his own little imitation, except the pics are of drunk Yalies at New Haven dives like Toad's and BAR.

Ordinarily, this feature, called "Go Shawty!", could not be more up our alley if we purchased an actual alley and paved it with printouts. But then we started to actually read the copy underneath each photo, and ... let's just say Mr. ZIP Code gives IvyGate commenters a run for their title of Worst People On The Internet.

Through five "Go Shawty!" installments (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), blogger 06520 probably couldn't be more hateful or misogynistic if he tried. Literally, there isn't a single photo of a girl that doesn't reduce her to a sex receptacle. Mix in some casual racism and contempt for anybody that doesn't look like they attend Yale, and you have a caption contest that accomplishes the impossible: 06520 makes sloppy-drunk kids at Toad's come off decent by comparison.

UPDATE 2:45 p.m.: Silly ZIP code! Deleting posts from your web site doesn't mean a "thang," in shawty parlance, to Google Cache. Archived copies of the pages are here. While we're updating: we forgot to mention that we emailed 06520 late last night and haven't heard back.

New York Observer Does God’s Work Exposing Princeton Bicker Scene

<em>New York Observer</em> Does God's Work Exposing Princeton Bicker SceneWith squirming delight we read the New York Observer's Princeton bicker takedown this morning, thrilling to each student's oblivious elitism, each eating club's repugnant practices, each Shermanesque detail.

To be honest, we weren't sure what we could possibly add to Spencer Morgan's exquisitely unsourced piece -- just go take it in now -- but readers at Princeton have filled us in on how the campus is reacting to a story that makes the social/cultural scene feel as friendly as Fallujah. One level-headed tipster reports:

Princetonian parents everywhere are probably hyperventilating, but all in all, it's a lot tamer than it could have been. ... Many of us are surprised that the reporter was able to attend several of the parties and get students to talk on the record. To my knowledge, most clubs make members sign an agreement saying they will never, ever, ever talk to the press, on pain of expulsion. When we heard the NYT was doing a story on bicker, for example, my club called a meeting where we were reminded to keep our big traps shut. But for the most part this article has elicited a minor shrug, since it's all old news to us. 

Another student, belonging to Ivy, messaged the club's listserv to joke that the misnamed Tamara "Watson" was in deep trouble:

In light of the dirty bicker that obviously took place, you have been retrohosed effective immediately.

To all the other new members, I love you despite any dirty bickering (which would NEVER happen in ivy anyway). You are all wonderful, and Spencer Morgan can stuff his own dick (if he has one) up his ass.

Naturally, not everyone took it as well. After the jump, read one outraged Tiger's email to Morgan. With critics like this, who needs supporters?

[Photo stolen from New York Observer's Melanie Flood until they make us take it down]

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Oh So Fresh Magazine Startup Unencumbered By Sense of Reality

<em>Oh So Fresh</em> Magazine Startup Unencumbered By Sense of RealityCollege is full of ill-fated magazine startups. Just ask Harvard's Scene, a training-wheels Vanity Fair minus the journalism. Let us turn our collective attention to Princeton's upcoming Oh-So-Fresh Magazine (please, O.S.F.), a "lifestyle and entertainment" publication with a rather unfortunate name. Guys: How can you possibly expect to avoid "douchebag" remarks when you call your magazine "Oh So Fresh"?

In an interview with the Princetonian, editor-in-chief Harrison Schaen '08 describes it as "a combination of GQ and Rolling Stone." So far, so good. But suddenly, as if hit by the hyperbole truck, he starts unleashing quote after Vayner-worthy quote:

  • "When I was in high school, I said to my friends, 'By the time I'll be 21, I'm going to start a revolution.' "
  • "You have to have your 'in,'" Schaen said. "It's not about what you know, it's about who you know. We know who to talk to. We know executive heads, we know producers, and that's how OSF serves as the medium between the University and the entertainment world."
  • "What sets us apart is our contacts," Schaen said. "We have contacts with MGM, Sony and Paramount, as well as major record labels. It's all about getting your name out there and having someone who matters look at you, and that's what we intend to do with OSF magazine."

We hope, for the sake of everyone involved, the Prince reporter botched these quotes. Even Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, a Princeton prof contributing a piece to the first issue, fails to say anything substantive: "Universities have to be alert to what's happening in the world," he says. "The academy is about making sense of the world. What else are we to make sense of? And the world is very varied."

We know starting a publication is no small feat -- you gotta commend Schaen a hundred percent for that. But a friendly word of advice: Pick up a publicist when you hire the rest of the staff. (Wait, we just re-read the Princetonian piece. You already have a publicist. You already have a publicist for your undergraduate magazine? On second thought, maybe that's the problem.)

A Comment on Comments

yeah, this post was a great ideaHey kiddos,

It's about time we sat down and had a talk. About commenting.

We want to hear from you. That's why we have a comments section. Call us dreamers, but at launch we pictured it as a place for Ivy smartasses to shine. But lately ... well, maybe it's best to point to this recent Churchillian battle of wits, from an item about a rap song:

Brown kid says:
Cornell sucks, I say we purge them from the ivy league

Harvard2007 says:
Yale sucks, Whatev...

Bravo, really. Do you guys intern at Aaron Sorkin's dialogue shop?

Yeah, okay, this is the Internet, and that's par for the anonymous course. And yeah, we ain't writing Shakespeare ourselves, neither. (Please never visit our ghastly July archives.) But it kills us that a lot of people are posting awesome comments, and getting lost in a sea of "ahahha says: Cornell is the worst ivy hahaha, better than brown and dartmouth, hahahahahhaha."

So: By all means, be tasteless, be destructive, be vitriolic. Tear our ill-argued screeds to shreds. Just don't be Fred.

For the record, we reserve the right to remove any comment that's derogatory or patently offensive. (If you're that uninspired, go here.) And we're gonna try to comment more frequently ourselves, so it's not just one-way yelling.

In conclusion, we're not angry. Just disappointed. We're die-hard behaviorists around here; we believe in positive reinforcement. That's why we want to start giving brilliance its due with a new comments round-up at the end of every week. So go -- sharpen your skewers, and prove those acceptance letters were deserved.